One of the biggest mistakes that happens so often when it comes to web design is that a website is built from the eyes and mind of the owner of the website. Every thing- color, photos, text placement – is the vision of the owner. Sometimes this is the fault of the owner, sometimes it is the fault of the web designer. You can’t always blame the web designer as he/she just wants to get paid. But the problem here is that the websites has to, and I say this again, has to, be built with the idea of who your audience is. Having a clear visual of who this audience is will allow your website to help you achieve the goals you have for your sight. Oh year, I forgot, you also need goals.

Goals are the backbone of the success of any project. Without having the goals in place you will always be frustrated with your website. Even if you have a clear definition of who your audience is you will not be happy with your website. Why is this? It is because there is no measure of the success without having the goals in place. Let’s say you have the targeted audience pinned down, now what? Well you need to make sure you know what you want to happen when this audience comes to your website. And once they come and they do as you hope they will, you need to have a way of telling if they have reached what you have set out to be the goal.  Taken the old approach that has been used in marketing will allow you to handle all of this before you even start to design your website, on your own or with your webmaster. This is the AIDA approach. Let’s talk about this.

A = Attention

The first goal  you should have with your website, as far as the design and placement of objects, is that it should grab the audience attention. Having the targeted audience in place will allow you to put objects in the right places to try to grab this attention. For example, if your main goal is to sell more breedings to a stallion you have, yet it takes a visitor 30 seconds to find information about this stud, more likely than not they will be gone. This stallion should be visible and stand our more than any other object in your design. Same can go for your sale horses. If you have a goal of your website being an avenue to potential buyers, your sale horses should stick out like a sore thumb to grab the attention of those visiting your website. Now that we have their attention, what do we do next……

I = Interest

We get them interested. How is this possible? You need to have some good copy, that is captivating and easy to spot, that will make their eyes go right to this object. When I say you need good copy, I am saying you need to have some type of headline that is easy and quick to read and right to the point. Why should it be easy to read? Because it will lead to the next step…..

D= Desire

If you really want to grab potential customers/clients, you need to put a desire in them to want what you are offering. This can’t be done in any boring fashion. This needs to be done with captivating objects, whether it is with images and/or text, this needs to grab them and pull them in. The desire we are usually looking for is for the visitor to want to go further into the website to find out more. This is part of the goal you have set. And with good analytic software you can easily set up analytics to find out if you are getting the desire you want the visitors to have. Which in turn will lead to the last step….

A = Action

If you have your visitors this far to your website you are doing good. If there is a desire to learn more about what you are offering you have a good chance at leading the visitor to action. And this is the result you want from the goals you have set. What would the action be? Most likely it would be someone communicating with you to find out more about your stallion or your sale horse. This communication is what you can expect to get from your website. I would recommend not making goals that your website will sell the horse for you, but it will be an avenue to lead people to you that will then give you the door open to make the sale.

In summary, the most important tip I can give you today is that you must do the important planning before you even start to think about the design and look and feel of your website. Once you have done this you can then start to create the look of your website that will produce the goals you have set forth in the beginning and in return get the communication and actions you hope for from your visitors.

Take this and run with it.

Equine Journal is using our content management system built for equine media companies that allows for complete control over articles, online magazines, banner advertising, and more.

The design process we take here after we have a quote from you is to look at the goals you have for the site. Then we will look at the sites you offered as sites that relate to what you would like your site to be. We will take into account the services you would like to be included in the design. Once we have all of this put together we will send you a quote. After we have worked out all of the details we will put together a template for you to look over. You will let us know your likes and dislikes of the template. We will add and subtract from the template over and over until you are happy with the graphical look of the site.

Once we have agreed on the template with you, we will start to create the site. We will host the site on a remote, private server for you to have the ability to look at the site being built without the public having the ability to see it. We will work on that server until you completion and once we have your full satisfaction, the site will go live.

Depending on your needs will depend on the costs of the building the site. Feel free to request a quote today and we will show you we can do the best work possible at a minimal cost that most competitors will not provide.

Web Design Variations

The design process can vary from project to project. Sometimes the project calls for a complete new website design. Other times the project is a redesign of a current website. Something to keep in mind is that these are not the only ways to get web design work done for you. We do custom work on many interactive programs that can be implemented into your current website. Here are some of the programs we can take and integrate into your current design if you do not feel like you need a complete overhaul:

• Blog : We prefer to use Wordpress as a blogging engine, but we can take any blog software and customize it to fit into your current website.
• Forum : Our preference here is phpBB3, but again, we can customize any of the forum software programs to work inside of your current website.
• CMS : We work with most of the content management systems that are available. Joomla is a favorite of most people these days, but we also have done work with Dolphin, phpNuke, and others.
• Others : There are plenty of other programs that can be implemented into your site that offer various ways for you to add on to your current site.

Keep these in mind if you are not in need of a complete design or redesign at this time but you want to add functionality to your website. We can do this and do it in a timely manner.

The forums are geared towards two groups of individuals. The first is the site owner(s). If you are working on your own website and have questions that you need answered when it comes to designing your website – you can get the answers in the forums. All facets of the design process will be discussed ranging from simple HTML design to advanced programming. In between you can find help on graphic design, search engine optimization, and more. We are happy to help those who have decided to tackle their own website, and we hope to be of help to any and all.

The second group is the web designer. There are numerous designers who work on equine related websites that doing wonderful work and we want to learn from you. We also want to lend our knowledge to you on any topics that you need help with. If you are a web designer you know that there is plenty to have in building state of the art websites. Some of us have better skills in one area as opposed to others. We can all lend a hand to help each other so that all horse websites in the future look the best they can.

We hope you share in our passion and mission of marketing the horse on the world wide web. If we can be of help to you please let us know by posting in one of the forums. We will try our best to answer all questions so that your horse website is top knotch.

Enjoy!

Rob

To start, here is the older template of the Janson Editions website:

And here is the template design we came up with for Janson Editions:

The first, and most important change that we implemented to the website was the ability for the template to grow with the amount of content, or images, that needed to be displayed on the page. The older template was only one large image that had restraints on how much content could go on a page and the use of images inside the template.

We also added a flash slideshow to the main page that would allow a portfolio like slideshow to run on the main page. Using flash allowed us to save some space as far as load time of the pictures that would be used.

Away from what can be seen to the visitor, there was a major need for search engine optimization. None of the pages had titles, keywords, descriptions, or any files on the server that would help the search engines to index the site better in the search engines. We also changed the file names and places them in different folders with names that would help in the search engine optimization process. For example, the old site would go to http://www.jansoneditions.com/gallery.html when someone wanted to see the Gallery. We put the gallery into a folder called “horse-fine-art-gallery”, which will help search engines pick up valuable keywords in the URL. This was done for all parts of the website that needed better placing in the search engines.

We also added the coding on all pages to monitor visitor tracking with Google Analytics. This will allow us to monitor all visitor activity and to find out what is working and what is not.

Next, we needed to give the Fine Art Gallery a better appearance from the old site. Here is how the gallery looked on the old site:

With this being the main page of the gallery on the old site, visitors had to actually go to each gallery print name to see the image. We wanted to make it easier for visitors to know what they wanted to see so they could decide if they wanted to learn more about the picture or not. So this is how we changed it:

Having a thumbnail of each print would allow visitors to see the image before having to investigate any further. We then went one step further and added a jquery lightbox. The lightbox allows visitors to hover over the thumbnail and see the full size print without having to change the page. This was implemented for ease of use for visitors to see what they wanted to see the easiest way possible.

We decided to use the same principle with the Licensing Images portion of the site. Here is how the old site displayed the categories of the Licensing Images:

With each collection of images there was a selection of multiple images to view. There also was a different set number of images in each collection. So to help visitors decide what collection to look at, we changed the appearance to this:

Using the thumbnail view with a link below that also showed how many images could be found in each collection, we felt this would allow visitors to have an idea of what they would find in each collection.

For each of use on the part of Janson Editions we added the ability for them handle all images in both the Licensing Images and Fine Art Gallery sections. Logging in to a browser based admin panel would allow Janson Editions to add/edit/delete albums, add/edit/delete images, and monitor the activity for each of the images. This helps them to decide what images will appear where and what images they want on the website and when.

With the use of jquery and some other newer technology, we were able to help improve their customer support as well. With the new contact form, someone can get any errors in their contact request without the page having to reload. We have found that if someone has an error in their form input and has to redo the form again to send it, they will not redo it. So with the contact form found on the Janson Editions website, all errors, and anything that is not ready for the form to be submitted, will appear on the same page so the error can be fixed without having to do the form all over again.

Most of the new technology being used on websites these days are helping in how the page is delivered to visitors and how more interactive the experience can be. At the same time, the site helps owners to interact with their visitors easier and the same for visitors with the site owner.

If you would like to see the new version of Janson Editions you can visit the site at http://www.jansoneditions.com

The first of the resources we are making available is a listing of web designers that cater to the horse industry. You might think this category is a little off the wall for us to be publishing. Why would a web designer and his company develop a resource guide that gives free publicity to other designers in the horse industry? The answer is simple. Not everyone is going to want to use SEMS Design services, and there will be times when SEMS Design might not be able to meet your deadline for the creation of your project. At the same time, there is some confusion about what a web designer is. There are some designers out there that have the whole package; graphical design skills, programming skills, search engine optimization skills, etc. Then there are those that only have one or two of the skills and your project needs one of the skills that are missing from your current designer. We will list the skills we think these designers have to help you to make the best decisions in picking your designer(s). These listings are in no particular order. They are from the first 2 pages of Google with the search phrase “horse website design”.

Summary

For the most part these are the sites I would tell you to visit if you do not have any use for our services or you are in need of a particular design. I added the Curly site for your protection when browsing. I really do not feel the need to prioritize these sites, just know that they where the only sites I found worthy of actually looking at, giving my opinion, and looking at some of their client sites. Any other of the design sites, that I found, I would tell you not even waste your money, because if you did spend $1, consider it wasted.

This list is not about fair or about getting more exposure for one person/company over another. It is about the mission: expanding and improving the identity of the horse on the world wide web.

Here is how it works.

1) Select your desired site category

There really is no difference in the selection of any of the categories besides the pre-defined pages in each one. We have created it this way so you can have a head start on doing what you want to do – publish your website. Now that you know what category you are going to use, you will select the template.

2) Selecting the Template

This is where you get the chance to select from hundreds of templates to give your site the look you want it to have. When you are in this phase you will be doing 6-8 steps. Here they are:

1. Choose the category you want to browse for your theme template.
2. Once you are in a category you can then select a theme from inside that category. Each time you select a theme you will see a preview of the selected theme.
3. Select the color combination available for the theme.
4. Upload a banner to implement into the theme to give it the unique look you desire.
5. Upload your logo
6. Type in your Site Title and Subtitle along with a footer message.

This will give your site the basic look before moving on to step 3: Customizing the pages.

3) Customizing the Pages

Now that the theme is selected you will add the pages you want to have included in your website.

This is what is great about the SEMS Design SiteBuilder. Adding and deleting pages is easier then ever. Here is what needs to be done and it only takes 5 minutes max.

1. We have set up some Page Sets. These sets already have selected page names that we think would go with a category you selected in step 1.
2. Standard Pages are those that are defined in the Page Set. Once you select a Page Set you will select which pages you want and then simply click the arrow to move them to your Page Structure, #4.
3. If you want to add a common page that you can then rename, you will do this from #3.
4. This shows you the current pages you have in your site.
5. Once you have your pages you can then easily move them up and down, left and right.

You are just about done building your site. The hard part is done and now all you have to do is add your pictures and content.

4) Editing Your Web Pages

Now that the template has been selected and you have changed the banner, you can edit the content and the images you add to your website.  Looking at the above image you will see that in this step there are 4 areas to work with:

1. #1 shows the pages you selected from the previous step. Selecting any of these will show the page so you can edit the content and insert images.
2. #2 is your editor. This allows you to markup all of your page with text, links, images, etc.
3. #3 is for your search engine optimization. Here you will type in the page title, the keywords for the page and the page description. This is for the search engine spiders to index your page in the proper place in the search engines.
4. #4 is the actual page. This is where you can do all of your editing and see how it will look.

You are now done. That was not that hard at all. Once you have finished editing your pages you will click the next button on the bottom, or the Publish button on top.

5) Publish Your Website

If you are trying our SiteBuilder for free, you will see a link to your published site. The site will be available to preview for 14 days. After that you will need to sign up with us for web hosting for the site to stay active.

Done!! If you are in the mood to try your hand at building your website, this is the tool for you. As time goes on we will be making the process even easier by adding templates that are strictly for the horse world. Stay tuned on that. For now, sit back,  roll up your sleeves and have some fun.

Please contact us with any questions you might have or use our Client Help Desk for support issues.

]]> http://www.semsdesign.com/in/web-design/free-web-design-by-creating-your-own-equine-website/feed/ 0 http://www.semsdesign.com/in/website-optimization/cutting-costs-by-using-your-website/ http://www.semsdesign.com/in/website-optimization/cutting-costs-by-using-your-website/#comments Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:40:09 +0000 Rob Simpson http://www.semsdesign.com/in/?p=373 It seems as though the theme these days that is found in most industries is how to cut down on costs. This is very real in the equine industry where a high percentage of individuals are hobbyist who already spend more then they receive. Cutting down on costs can be done without having to lose out on any of the luxuries that you have been accustomed to. How is this done? By using your website to your advantage. Having a website that can do a lot of the work for you can be time saving and cost saving. Here are some ways your site can help you in cutting some of those costs down in your horse expenses.

1) Brochures

Have you ever taken the time to see how much you have spent on ink and paper making brochures? How about the time you have had to spend making the brochure? Did you know that with server side scripting you can have your brochures created for you. This takes away from the time you would use to make the brochure. Once the server has created the brochure, a person could then request the brochure in PDF format that they could download. Once they have the brochure on their computer they can then print it out, using their ink and their paper. This process alone has saved you time and money that you can then use in other areas of marketing. We can also take it a step further by having a database set up so that when someone requests the brochure there is an entry put into the database to count the download. This can keep track of how many times your brochure has been downloaded. Much easier then keeping track of how many times someone has picked up your brochure at a horse show or an expo. This can also help in targeting a specific audience as you will know only those who have an interest will download your brochure.

What are some possible uses for a brochure on your website? Let’s look at some.

a) Stallion brochure – For our example we our going to go with the fact that you do not have time or money to spend on making a stallion card. If you are not familiar with a stallion card, it is double sided and on one the front side is the picture of the horse and on the back side is the pedigree with some information and contact information. We could put all of the information into a database so that the stallion card is created automatically when someone requests the download. Then using some dynamic PDF coding we can have the PDF stallion card created dynamically without having to do anything. Just to expand our creativeness, let’s say someone wants to print the stallion card and have a fantasy pedigree on the back. They simply would fill in the dam information of the pedigree and the stallion card would not be unique to what is of interest to them.

b) Sales Flyer – This concept would pretty much be the same as the stallion brochure with a couple extra twists involved. Their is the possibility that you have multiple sale horses available. We can set up a database to handle all of the information for each horse including photo, horse information, pedigree, show results, history, etc. Since all of the information is in a database, each horse will now have an unique id associated with them. This will help when you have a list of horses for sale on your site. When someone finds a horse of interest and they want to click on the link to download the flyer, the unique id will be added to the link and the PDF that will appear will be for that horse. So all we have to do is create a template that would be for your flyer and the rest will be inserted for us.

We can even stretch this out so that a visitor can download a pdf that is created that lists all of the horses for sale with a short description of each one with the price tag and contact information.

2) Contact Form

Having a contact form on your website can be helpful in saving both time and money. If your site has a form that a visitor can fill in to send you a message, this can save you time and money. How will it save you time? It is a helpful way in screening requests so that you can decide who is important to contact by phone, or who can be answered by simply replying to the contact form via reply mail. How can it save you money? If you get requests from out of town, or out of your country, and the request is not an important issue, you can reply via email. This can help you to cut down on long distance phone costs

3) Google Maps & Driving Directions

I can’t say this falls to heavily in either the saving costs or saving time category, but it can be of use to you when it comes to ease of use. Having a Google Map of your location on your website allows a visitor to find out exactly where you are located. If it is someone who you have invited to your place, you can send them to your website to get exact directions to your place. Google Maps is very highly configurable, even to the point to where someone can find out where all the traffic lights are and how heavy traffic is. If you are an equine professional this can help in cutting down office time that I am sure you do not have time for.

4) Knowledge Base

This is the technical term used, but you can call it what you will. I am sure you find a lot of time you are answering questions over and over. Having a knowledge base on your website will allow you to have defined questions and answers that can be answered for someone who goes to your website. This is not only helpful for professionals but also for farms. You might save a non important phone call from someone if they can find the answers on your website. A well built knowledge base will allow you to enter questions and answers into text fields and the program will create everything else for you.

5) Newsletter

So long for the days of having to send out newsletters by mail. You want to talk about spending money, look at what you have to pay for ink, paper, envelopes, and postage these days. Having a newsletter system on your server will allow you to send personalized newsletters to members email boxes whenever you want. And the program will do all of the work for you. We have set some newsletters up for as little as $100, and one of them has 2500 members they send to.

6) Word of Mouth Marketing

I have talked about this in other articles, but it is so helpful. Having a way for visitors to refer your website to their friends is powerful. It is very easy for them to do. They simply fill in their name and email, along with their friends name and email, and done. Behind the scenes there is already a pre-made message that is ready to be delivered. The email not only will refer the friend to your website, it will also give a brief summary about you. Easy and free marketing.

7) Printable Forms

Using your website as your secretary can be a huge benefit when it comes to saving time and money. Before websites you, or your office secretary, had to put together forms for a prospective client, put it in a package, mail it, and then wait a couple days for it to be received. Not any more. Having any and all of your important forms on your site will cut down on those costs. For professionals it will cut down on sending out new client forms, and for farms, it can be an easy way to get out contracts. These are only a few examples of forms.

Summary

As you can see from the list above, the website is now your new secretary. For most people, if you don’t get screwed, it can be your cheapest. Using your website as a tool for communication can save you money and time. This can help those who are trying to cut costs or those that are trying to save time. This is always something you should be striving for, as there are always others areas that could use your attention.

This is only a small scale of what a website can do for you. I suggest you take a look around and see what others are doing on their site to help them. You should always strive to have your website up to date with not only content, but with the newest technology and newest trends.

Rob

Steps for URL Rewriting

How easy it is to set up making memorable links will be determined by the software that is running on your server. Some web hosting companies offer you a control panel that will give you access to your .htaccess file and URL rewriting. We do offer this in our control panel so that you can easily handle doing something like this without having to do the following hard coding.

Step 1: Alter your .htaccess file

If there is already a .htaccess file on your server you should be able to find it in your root folder. If you do not find it you can open a text editor to create the file. Once you have your .htaccess file open you will want to add the following code:

RewriteEngine On    # Turn on the rewriting engine<code>
RewriteRule    ^johnny/?$ johnny_be_good.php    [NC,L]    # Handle the request for Johnny
</code>

Here is the explanation of what has just been entered.

• RewriteRule – Tells Apache that this like refers to a single RewriteRule.
• ^/johnny/?$ – The “pattern”. The server will check the URL of every request to the site to see if this pattern matches. If it does, then Apache will swap the URL of the request for the “substitution” section that follows.
• johnny_be_good.php – The “substitution”. If the pattern above matches the request, Apache uses this URL instead of the requested URL.
• [NC,L] – “Flags”, that tell Apache how to apply the rule. In this case, we’re using two flags. “NC”, tells Apache that this rule should be case-insensitive, and “L” tells Apache not to process any more rules if this one is used.
• # Handle the request for Johnny – Comment explaining what the rule does (optional but recommended)

Now you can save the file as .htaccess. If you are using a text editor make sure you save as “All Files” and not “.txt”. Then you can upload the file to your root folder.

Now you can open your pages and change your links to www.meadowhorsefarm.com/johnny. If you are doing offline advertising you can simply use the same URL, www.meadowhorsefarm.com/johhny for example, to help make your link memorable.

Please note that the .htaccess file is very sensitive as is URL rewriting. If you are unsure about these steps you can check out Apache URL Rewriting Guide.

If you can get the hang of rewriting you will start to get creative in the way you link to your pages. This will help with making your links attractive in online and offline marketing, and help in search engine optimization. For example, let’s say we have the same website, www.meadowhorsefarm.com. We also have a folder for salehorses and a page for Johnny Be Good. Keeping search engine optimization in mind you can create a rewriting rule that would change www.meadowhorsefarm.com/salehorses/johnny_be_good.php to www.meadhorsefarm.com/western-pleasure-sale-horse/johnny/. Seeing that search engines have a high criteria on picking up keywords in the URL, this would help if Johnny Be Good is a western pleasure sale horse.

The above example is a basic example. There are other ways to create patterns for more dynamic websites. You can go as high as your imagination will take you. You can even go to the point to where the link will read www.meadowhorsefarm.com/horses-for-sale/quarter-horse/western-pleasure-sale-horse/johnny/. You can see from this link that there are numerous keywords that have been added to the URL. Great for search engine spiders that come to your site.

There are millions of ways to improve your links and your search engine optimization with URL rewriting, and all it takes is some practice and a good imagination. Please note one more time that you have to be careful with the rewriting of the links and the .htaccess file. Any incorrect code will result in fatal errors.

If you would like more information on this please let me know. I can give you some tips by email, with the discussion below, or you can hire me to re-do your website and the way the links are shown. Have fun and I hope this is helpful in your online and offline marketing.

Rob